Sunday, August 15, 2010

Inhaled Incense "K2" May Cause Heart Damage

"We're theorizing that something in the K2 caused his coronary arteries to spasm, causing blockage of blood flow temporarily to his heart," said Dr. Colin Kane, a pediatric cardiologist who treated both cases. "He had a heart attack."

Kane said he had never even heard of K2 before. He scoured journals and the Internet for legitimate medical research on it; right now, there isn't any.

He is now educating colleagues at Children's Medical Center about K2, including what to look for and especially what to ask teenagers who come in with unexplained heart problems. Since K2 has yet to be studied, no one is really sure what it can do to the body.

K2 is a mixture of herbs and spices manufactured as an incense. According to a company website, K2 is not meant for human consumption.

K2 is incense – a blend of herbs and spices sprayed with a synthetic compound similar to THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) found in marijuana. The combination looks like crushed potpourri. Blends are traditionally burned in incense pots; however, teens roll the K2 incense in wrappers to make joints, or they smoke it in pipes. When smoked, K2 delivers a high similar to that of marijuana. Users claim it's almost impossible to tell the difference between the two.

18 comments:

I really need more information on this possible heart damage--my son smoked K2 and is now having chest pain--it is his first day of college and he spent it in the health center and they do not know anything. PLEASE respond. Will leave pone number if you respond. Can come to Dallas.

I smoked it through the summer but stopped for a while. Then, a few weeks ago I tried it one more time, and might have almost died. Aside from the expected high, I get really dizzy and my lungs and throat got waves of sharp pain. I laid down and it felt like i was throwing up into my lungs but nothing was coming up. My heart was beating faster and harder than I could have imagined. I started sweating a lot, felt my head and was burning up. I rushed to the bathroom, and my face was pale like dead skin and my eyes and around my eyes were red. I sat in a cold shower for 30 mins. After I got out i felt much better, but still terrible, and after 10 minutes i was burning up again. I sat in the shower for another 15 min until a friend told me over the phone to take Advil. After taking that I got better over the course of an hour or so. To summarize I felt like every organ in my body was having an allergic reaction and I was dieing. I have mini panic attacks when ever I think of that night, and my heart hurts every day too. Don't let anyone smoke this stuff, I wish I never had.

I smoked k2 for about a month and a half and now for the past 6 months of not smoking it iI can't do any strenuous activities or my heart beats at a very irregular pace about 8x as hard an 2ce as fast and that's with taking pills that prevent palpitations.... I've been to the doctor but none of them know anything about k2.... If anyone knows anything please let me know..Christian_alltop12@hotmail.com

i took one hit, and like you said, had a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital. i knew right away that i didnt like it and that something bad was going to happen. ive tried other kinds before but nothing like this happened. what i had was called barely legal. something like this happened to another one of my friends, and i even had someone go in and out of conciousness, laughing fits, and not knowing what was going on, right in my lap. this stuff is bad, and its marketed for kids, and thats no good. at the hospital the only thing i got was called stupid. this stuff is bad

My friend smoked this stuff (not sure which blend) more than 6 days ago and she can't recover. She's hallucination and nobody can make sense of what she's saying or doing. The cops ended up arresting her because she was driving around the city erratically with no final destination. She ended up in rehab yesterday but she walked out today with the same mentality.

I smoked it after many people I know had been doing it for a year or two, since none of them had had any reaction I thought it would be fine. I tried it (one hit) about three months ago, and it gave me a buzz like pot. Then I bought some called Flame bubble berry blue about a week ago. I smoked it, and was shocked that one hit could mess you up so fast. I did it for three or four days and everything was fine, then last night the worst night of my life!!! One hit...no more than before, and I almost died..My blood pressure dropped, I couldnt feel my arms or legs, because of the lack of bloodflow, which also caused my heart to pound fast and hard....I was terrified..My body kicked into survival mode, I made myself get into the shower, and I stayed in there, and prayed to god to let me live...It wasn't just a "bad trip" I almost died. I won't go into details, but this stuff is killing people, and doing the research all the stories are the same....just some people don't live to tell about it...it can be you....My memory, has been bad today, and my heart and chest hurt, and Ive been very tired...I didnt go to the hospital, because I am 34, and ashamed to admit I was so stupid! When you feel your spirit leaving your body, and your heart stopping, you will know that this stuff is meant to kill people. Not for human consumption!!! I wonder if they sell it in China...where it's made. They spray it with the compounds similar THC they know we are buying it to smoke...come on it's $10-20.for a 1.5gram bag...in tobacco stores, and some gas stations, some around my town even throw in cigarillos!!! 18 yr olds can buy it....It's not worth dying...please people don't do it...and smoking pot is illegal...it's never killed people. Laws need to be changed!

I smoked it the other day and was begging to go to the hospital. I knew the second I tried it, the was bad stuff, and I've ben smoking pot for 3 years. it heightened my senses so bad it was beyond uncomfortable, my heart was pounding so hard and fast I literally thought it was going to explode out of my chest. as the time went by, it got worse, and faster, I started shaking, my throat felt like it was tightening up. Im sure I almost had a heart attack. no one should ever try this!!! just smoke real weed!!!

I have been smoking marijuana for 6 full years and about 4 months ago I sat on my back porch with my bong and sucked some "Mad Hatter Spice" through and inhaled it exactly like I would weed. Well I ended up seeing my life before my eyes. Went through a terrible hallucination process. Felt like I was being attacked by an evil spirit and it was a test from god. I'm glad to be alive and glad to be smoking ONLY weed these days!

Once i took a gravity bong hit of this stuff called G20. After the first minute of me taking it i just felt really high. then i started to feel my heart pound in my chest and then it started beating REALLY fast. i sat there for about 20 seconds then my heart literally just skipped like 2 beats and i started to panic. i laid down for a bit to sober up but i seriously think i almost died. now im constantly aware of my heart beating and i have anxiety issues. this shit aint worth it

I took two hits of this stuff, named "xxx game over" and had a severe panic attack. My heart was beating so hard and fast for 30minutes I figured there's no way I could survive, I thought my heart was going to explode. I wanted to go to the hospital but my brother talked me out of it. Bad decision. The next morning I woke up having severe heart palpitations (irregular beats). This caused extreme anxiety and I fear for my well being. Its been two weeks now and I'm still having palpitations quite frequently every day, this stuff has ruined my life. I just want to be normal again and to think it all could have been avoided by not smoking it is absolutely disgusting. I wasn't even really wanting to smoke it, but I didn't have weed and figured two hits wouldn't be over doing it. :( I encourage everyone to NEVER SMOKE SPICE/K2! It is simply not worth the risk!

im pretty sure when i go to the dr. this month he will ask me if i think ive had a heart attack recently, im so addicted to this crap, i started smoking it when i quit drinking and now ive tried to quit it 3 times in a year, ive just quit again about a week ago having exteme withdraws and heart issues, cant eat, cant sleep cant pee blah blah but when i quit once for a month and smoked it again for the first time, im pretty sure i had a heart attack, heart pounding faster than ever before, labored breathing, unable to talke, sick to stomach, numb arms back pains then once it all went away i passed out not exactly under my own regard, im giving it up tho, i think im going to tell my AA ive been cross using and i need help, this shit is seriously hard and addicting stay away ...

Im 15, (i don't need to hear the 'your to young' shit) but 14 when I first tried k2 I smoked weed for about a full year before ever trying k2. Don't ever. Take my word for it. K2 is a drug meant to be used as a relaxer, taking k2 with a group of friends isn't the way to go. Smoking k2 at all isn't the way to go. I was 14 and at my community lake with about 5 friends, me and three other friends dipped out and went to smoke what I though was weed but was really k2. I took about 7 hits off of that bowl of k2 which put me at a major risk. If your going to take any hits, your only supposed to take 1. I'm very petite so it hit me like a rock. My adrenaline started pumping, my arms and legs began to get numb (like the feeling you get when your limbs are falling asleep) my heart began pounding out of my chest. So I panicked, heart attacks and heart problems are very common in my family. Two of the guys we were with ended up dropping off me and my friend back off at the community pond and drove off. They practically left me in a position where I almost died. I started to hallucinate. I had no idea what was going on, it felt as if my body was taken out of reality and put into some dream. There was about 5 people at the pond, my friend richie, Jackson, Matt, and my friend Abby. Richie is the joker type. He thought I was just messing around when I was telling them to call 911, I was panicking. I started to dry heave. I had to vomit an get it all out but I couldn't, i needed to cleanse my body. With three hours of all this going on it finally stopped, it's scary. I thought I was going to die and I to this day say, that if my friend Jackson (a 4.0 honor student who would never think of drugs) wasn't there I would be dead. He saved my life. I couldn't thank him more. From expierence don't ever do it.

It should be a felony to sell this stuff. A girl I sort of know smoked this stuff very heavyly and found out she was 7 weeks pregnant. What about that innocent baby. And poor mom having to live with that.

I have been smoking K2 on and off for about a year now. I wasn't having any kind of problems, well the occasional vomiting. Last night did it, I smoked only a couple hits and almost right away I felt my body going numb. I barely made it into the house, by this time the ringing in my ears had started and my eyes were slowly going black. my chest tighting up, my finger tips and toes were turning blue as were my lips.(a friend that talked me through this had told me the info about my lips and finger tips)It took everything I had in me to tell my friend I think I was dying....my heart felt like it had stopped beating....my last words were "this is it" I could feel my spirit slipping away....I don't even know how I came out of this but I will tell you one thing i will never smoke that crap again....

About 2 hour ago my boyfriend and i smoked some K2 called LIGHTS OUT. We were watching tv and then he looked at me and said babe I'm tripping hard....he wouldn't focus on anything, got pale white and started sweating profusely. I'm a medical student (yes I realize I'm an idiot for smoking it) so I immediately started checking his vital signs (pupils, heart beats per minute, respirations per minute , his motor skills) His pupils were huge, his heart was racing, his respirations were fast and shallow and his speech was impaired (it sounded like he was drunk). I had the phone in my hand with 911 already typed in and he begged me not to call them. But I know what can happen I used to work at a headshop thats main income is from K2..$14,000 a week!...I started freaking out my biggest fear is that he was having a stroke. He asked for water bottles and i brought them to him and he dumped 3 of them all over his body but couldnt explain to me what he was doing or why he was doing it.He was so lost and confused had no clue where he was or who I was..he just kept staring at things. He could barely hold his head up and when he tried to stand up he was really uncoordinated. So i made him sit down...every time he lifted his legs off the floor they would shake almost as if his muscles were having spasms. Once he started to come down from the trip (about an hour ago) i started to ask him questions like his name and my name and the date..where he graduated high school etc. he answered them perfectly. Told me he had extreme chest pain but no headache and that he was extremely tired (he could barely keep his eyes open)after i kept him awake for awhile i finally let him go to sleep. I've been watching his respirations and checking his pulse for the last hour he seems to be doing normal. This is the worst experience of my life. I feel so stupid doing this and letting him do it when i know first hand what it can do to people as one of my old customers had a stroke and died 3 months ago from smoking about 10grams of K2 every day. After almost loosing my boyfriend to this horrible drug i am going to speak out against it and try and get it (and anything like it) made illegal in my state.

Just so parents know what they are looking for...there are different brands of K2 that are all packaged differently. Some come in foil packages and others are in vials. The common names that were sold in the shop that i used to work at are: (in the foil packages) AK-47, Headstash, BrainFreeze, Hysteria, Lights out, Night train, Tsunami Rush, Mad Hatter, Bizzaro. (in the vials )--> el diablo, black out, black mamba, Johnny Clearwater, Funky Monkey, Hawaiian Bliss, Power Diesel, Caribbean Dream, HedgeHog, and the strongest was Sonic Zero

I had so much on my conscious that the money i was making did not matter knowing that what i was selling to 18 year olds kids all the way up to 40-50 year old adults was killing them. THIS IS A SERIOUS DRUG THAT KILLS PEOPLE. My boyfriend and i have been smoking this for 5 months now and we both have had serious chest pains after smoking it but didn't think nothing of it. now it is in the trash and it will stay there. THIS SUBSTANCE IS ADDICTING AND EXTREMELY HARMFUL!!!! IF YOU KNOW ANYONE WHO IS SMOKING IT GET THEM HELP IMMEDIATELY BECAUSE IT WILL EVENTUALLY KILL THEM!!!!

I'm 16 and I smoke k2 about once or twice a month and the high is like weed and the only reason I smoke it and anybody else I know is because we're on probation and it doesn't show up on pee tested and I think thats the reason most people smoke it. Just 2 days ago I smoked it and my friend smoked with me and at first it felt like a weed high until I started thinking about then I had a very minor panic attack and it wore off then my friend left and I smoked more and it started out the same until I sat down then the room started spinning and I couldn't focus on what I was looking at and then I got freaked out and my heart started beating really fast and I really thought I was gonna die and I was home alone and I didn't know when anybody was getting home and I don't have a phone because of my PO and I'm on house arrest. I know that I'm going to smoke it again so I came here to see if anybody knows what to do if that happens again but I can't contact anybody or anything or I'll go to rehab so can somebody help me?

About Me

Westby G. Fisher, MD, FACC is a board certified internist, cardiologist, and cardiac electrophysiologist (doctor specializing in heart rhythm disorders) practicing at NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, IL, USA and is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine. He entered the blog-o-sphere in November, 2005.
DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in this blog are strictly the those of the author(s) and should not be construed as the opinion(s) or policy(ies) of NorthShore University HealthSystem, nor recommendations for your care or anyone else's. Please seek professional guidance instead.